Pastures of Heaven

Yesterday I went to the Salinas Valley to revisit a home that I have done some sewing for through a very talented designer, Cindy Hattersley. You can see more of her work on her blog, Villa Cantina.



I was near Castle Rock which is mentioned in John Steinbeck’s book Pastures of Heaven.( I need to read that book.)
I got some pictures of some of my work: pillows, window seat and window shade.



Another window seat with pillows and shade.

 

A slipcovered chair with pleats. Oh how I love pleats on a slipcover.

A pleated chair cushion:

And although I made the large pillows in this last picture, I am including it mostly because I love the bird nest paintings above the bed.

 I came home with two pages of notes and measurements for some new projects. Yea!

Waiting for a ride.

I just finished  a couple of fun projects. A desk chair to make someone’s work more fun and a chair for new and expectant moms to rest in at a midwife’s office. Here they sit at my doorstep waiting for a ride home.






The slipcover for the bigger chair was really fun to do. The client found a vintage slipcover made of beautiful bark cloth for a taller, narrower wing chair and I took it apart and moved some parts around to make it work. I had to purchase a contrasting fabric for the back, but added buttons covered in the bark cloth.
They are both safely home now. I will miss them.

From workshop to hilltop.

I just delivered these fun slipcovered chairs, and matching covers for 4 more chairs to an amazing house on top of a hill. (The picture was taken at my house.) When I saw all the nice built-in storage and a big roomy, airy kitchen with tons of cupboards, a huge island and a corner window seat, I said “Did you design your house?” and the answer was “yes”. All the beautiful, personal features gave it away.
I like the mixture of fabrics she chose. When the bolts first arrived, I wasn’t so sure, but I think they turned out really nice and fit with her house and décor really well. I have been seeing a lot of ikat lately. Anthropology has a lot of fun stuff in the “home” section right now. After doing some reading, I found out that it is made by tying and dyeing the threads before they are woven. I found a good blog post about the process here. As it says, most of the ikat we see is more likely a print made to look like ikat and not the real thing. Either way it makes a house feel homey, like there might be sheep grazing in the backyard, and homemade bread in the oven.

Longing for my normal life.

I took these pictures of my workroom/studio a couple of weeks ago. Since I have been driving to the courthouse every day for jury duty, and mentally exhausted when I get home, I haven't spent much time there.








I am really appreciating the luxury of working from my home, and can't wait to get back to my normal schedule that doesn't involve traffic.

Transformed.

I think my two favorite things about making slipcovers are seeing a piece of furniture transfomed, and turning a client's vision into reality. This chair (there were actually two of them) is a perfect example.



The client bought the chairs at a yardsale and was going to paint them and maybe have them upholstered, but got inspired when she thought about white linen.



This picture was taken in the middle of my living room, but they look really nice in her French country inspired house.

Workin' on the workroom.

I recently recovered my cutting/ironing table. I like to pad it so that I can easily iron on it. I pad it with thrifted mattress pads and top it with a thrifted cotton sheet, since cotton can handle a higher iron setting than a cotton/poly blend.



I found these chrome shopping baskets on e-bay for a great price. They are my new workroom storage containers.




I will post a picture of my new shelves when they get painted. Just need a free weekend. This weekend I will be participating in the wedding trunk show on Saturday. On Sunday I will be at a local quilt show, not participating, but admiring the beautiful handwork, and visiting all the great vendors.

The excitement is building.

My husband, who knows how to build things made some new shelves for my workroom. They are in the garage and have to be installed. I was using a nice old baker's rack before, that sort of worked, but not really, so I moved it to the kitchen. It will be so useful there as a place for all the things that fill up the small space.

Here it is in my workroom. It was just too hard to get things off of it because of the wire across the front of the shelves.



And here it is in its new place. Ahhh.....now my kitchen counters have less clutter, and I don't have to climb up on a chair to get my cookie cutters off that top cabinet shelf.

Like playing "dress-up".

When I am making slipcovers, especially for chairs, I feel like I am dressing them up in new clothes. Over a year ago I made slipcovers for two wing chairs, and the owner of the chairs said that one was a grandmother's chair and the other a grandfather's, since they are just slightly different in style. I have affectionately been calling them Mom and Pop.



Well, Mom and Pop got new clothes. They are now dressed in a lovely Colefax and Fowler print.



Mmmm. So inviting. Tea anyone?

De-pleated.

Wow, time flies when you are immersed in pleating projects. I spent the last couple of weeks, before this week, making cushions, shams and a bed skirt with pleats. I have plenty of sewing jobs to do, which I am very thankful for, so I have been working hard while the work is available.

I thought I would share a method I used, out of desperation, while making 5 inch box pleats on a king sized bed skirt. That comes to about 48 pleats that I was trying to finish in a hurry.

I cut a piece of cardboard the width of my pleat (5 inches) and used that as a pressing guide, pressing the pleat right on the cardboard.



Then I cut another piece of cardboard twice the width of the fold under the pleat. Normally I would fold it to the middle of the top part, but I didn't have enough fabric to do that. This cardboard was used to form the underside of the pleats, keeping everything nice and straight while I pressed it.





Then I pinned the pleat in place. To keep from losing track of how many of the 48 pleats I had completed, I stuck a pin in my cutting table, off to the side, every time I finished a pleat.

After all that pleating, I made slipcovers for my daughter's chairs. We made the 300 mile trip to visit and deliver them last weekend and had a really nice visit. They took us on a couple of beachside outings, and of course we had fun playing with our 9 month old grandson. He is sooo cute.

I was so excited to put the covers on the chairs, that I failed to give them a good press first, but the beauty of slipcovers is that they don't have to look too perfect. Right?

Seams to me.....

I recently made some canvas liners for wire baskets, and because I didn't want the seam allowances to show through the holes of the baskets, I used the flat felt seam. You know, the seam that is on your jeans. I watched a video of how jeans are made, and as I suspected, someone in a factory, feeds the pant legs into a machine that makes the seam in one swift zzzihhhhh of the special flat felt seam machine. (Editing note: I always thought this seam was called a flat felt seam, and when I searched it on the internet, as such, I found plenty of entries, but after looking it up in the dictionary, and other sewing resources, I now know that it is actually a flat felled seam. )





I also watched a couple of nice tutorials on making a flat felt seam in the comfort of your own home, but honestly, they were a little tedious for me, but that's just me. Impatient I guess. The tediousness involved a lot of pressing and pinning, which is certainly necessary sometimes, but because I make slipcovers and work mostly with heavier fabrics, it's not always practical.

Several years ago, before I started my slipcover business, I worked in an upholstery shop. There was no use of pins there, which was a shock to me at the time, and though they had an iron, as I recall, when I asked to use it one day,a search was called to find it. So, here is my flat felt seam instruction for the impatients of the world. (It works best with fabrics that are a little heavier, that stay where you put them.)

Because I started out making a tube that had only one seam, I positioned the top layer of fabric with 1/4 of an inch allowance, and the bottom about 1/2 of an inch of allowance.



After the seam is stitched, the larger allowance is folded over the smaller. If you are making something from a pattern and it isn't practical to move the top allowance over before stitching, then sew your seam, and trim the top allowance.





Next, fold the seam flat, with the "folded over" allowance on top, (this is where the pressing and pinning would come in, if you wish to add those steps) and stitch close to the edge.




Here is the finished seam.

Monograms

I just finished some simple covers that have been dressed up with a monogram. After I made my pattern and cut out the backs, the designer took them to an embroiderer and brought them back to me so that I could then sew the covers. I like her choice of fabric, and thread color for the letter.




This beautiful monogram is from the gallery of Caroline Brackenridge's Monogram Inc. website. If you are doing any kind of snack replacement, this is a delicious place to visit instead of eating a cookie.





And I have to recommend that you visit angie's blog. She is a fellow slipcoverer who has been doing some beautiful screen printed monograms.

If I didn't have piles of work to do, and several other projects going I would be soooo tempted to do some monograming myself.

Weight for me.

I started off my work day today by recovering my cutting table, which is a large piece of plywood covered with a cotton mattress cover, with a cotton sheet over that. I have it across two rolling steel shelf units that are adjusted to a nice working height. I am always looking for cotton sheets at thrift stores, etc. because my iron doesn't glide so nicely over ones with polyester content.

It's a really nice feeling to have a fresh work surface. Almost like having nice clean sheets on the bed.

I found these great little weights...Healthways, Glamour Belles.....at an estate sale on Sunday. I almost didn't pick them up, because they were missing the bars to put them on, but I'm glad I got them.



Aren't they cute. They're pink!




I never use pins when cutting out a pattern, but sometimes I use weights to hold the pattern in place while I cut the fabric. I have a couple of other sets of pattern weights but these will be my new favorites.

free style

A while back I talked about the freecycle network. I have been able to give away some things I didn't need anymore, and have also gotten some very useful stuff, like these cardboard tubes. They were originally used as packaging for breakable containers.



When I saw the listing, I immediately thought "STORAGE!".




I am always looking for ways to display the bits and pieces of fabric that I have collected, in a way that will inspire creativity.



I just pulled a piece of black elastic out of my "elastic drawer" to hold them together and had an instant storage thingy. I also put some in my closet to hold shoes.

Can you cut it?

Nothing irritates me more than when I can't cut it. Since I use my scissors every day, they get dull pretty fast and a good sharpening service has been hard to find.

My favorite pair of scissors are lightweight steel Wiss brand that I found at a yard sale several years ago. I haven't been able to find another pair like them, so end up buying one of the two well known brands that our local fabric store carries when I need a back-up. They are cold and heavy though, and don't seem to last very long with the hard use they get from me. But....I have good news. I discovered that they sell another brand that are even lighter and sharper than my old faithfuls. Behold:





They are Clover brand, made in Japan. They are kind of expensive, but worth it if you are doing a lot of cutting of fabric. (Our fabric store offers a 40% off coupon once a month that can be used on any one item in the store, so I use it when I need scissors.) I am very happy with these, but probably won't use them on linen or hemp, which seem to be very hard on blades.


These little Singer scissors are very useful for cutting thread when doing hand sewing or embroidery.




And then there are these giants that I bought at the flea market. They are useful for making long straight cuts.



And I couldn't get by without a pair of cuticle scissors that are the very best for taking seams apart.

I'm filling my pockets.

Here is the finished pocket organizer from my last post. (Anything that cuts down on "Where did I put that" time will help to maintain sanity!)

Change of scenery.

I've noticed that one of the things I love about vacations and even short get-aways is waking up to something different. It doesn't even have to be a panoramic view, just pleasant in some way. The next best thing, for me, is to rearrange the furniture, or paint and put up new pictures.

Last weekend I cleaned and rearranged my sewing room, where I spend most of the day most weekdays. It has done wonders for my frame of mind.

I didn't move everything around, I just turned my cutting table and was surprised that it works so well. I thought it was too long and wouldn't leave enough room to walk around it, but it is actually much better. And I had to get rid of a lot of random stuff that was stuffed under there. That's usually a "good thing", right Martha?

The other day while shopping for supplies at a local fabric store, I couldn't walk away from a box of swatches that were for sale.



I have always been drawn to red and green, or pink and green, and thought these would make a great organizer for all the little tools I use and don't like to loose.




Pockets! I need pockets! Red and green pockets.
Here is the beginning of my organizer project. I will show the finished product soon.




I also finally found a home for my collection of sewing machine drawers. I like them a lot and they are useful too. (I just have to make a master list of what is in each drawer.)



So until I have a specially built cabinet for them, I can enjoy them on this closet shelf while I work.

My beef with the ham.

I recently made seats for some round chairs and was reminded how hard it is to press slipcovers at times. I have a pressing ham
that works sometimes, but not that often. (Not to be confused with a ham press ). For a while I have been wanting to make one myself.


I decided that I need something shaped more like a roast. I cut two layers of wool for the top and two for the bottom and two strips for the "boxing". Since the pressing roast needs to be extra firm and I didn't want to go out looking for sawdust, I used cut up wool scraps.





I was having a hard time getting it firm enough, so I added a core of rolled up wool.



The finished product looks more like a giant pork chop, but will work nicely for those hard to press slipcover arm-fronts. For the round cushions I actually need a big pie slice. Maybe I will tackle that next.